Our life and travels throughout 2000 miles of British waterways: a bit of canal history, an occasional mystery; spiced with large quantities of love, laughter, and great camaraderie!

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Friday, April 27, 2012

For Steam Buffs everywhere

Steel, Steam and Stars III is a mega 9 day steam event at Llangollen. It is being held by the Betton grange 6880 society who are building a GWR Grange loco here in Llangollen engine shed.
Along the route there are events at Glyndyfrdwy and Carog stations that include vintage cars, tractors, steam driven vehicles and Model railways. Double headed trains with at times 12 engines in steam there was always something happening. Jaq enjoyed her first ride on a steam train as i`m sure did the huge crowds at every station.

In 1955 there were thousands of steam engines operating when British Railways decided to modernise and go over to Diesel. All those steam engines would be a big scrap operation and of the many yards involved the Woodham brothers at Barry in Wales.It is the most well known because of the large number of engines that were saved from the cutting torch by preservation society's all over the country. The story of Barry scrapyard can be readHERE. There are 3 parts so if the first part steams you up search out parts 2/3.

I must confess to a love of steam and hope this might interest others.
If you prefer Diesel check THIS LINK sent to me by Mike who by now is here in the UK having sold up in Canada to begin a life afloat. The train has 5 engines and 25 coaches.

Llangollen station now terminates just out of shot at the bottom of the picture. It once passed under the bridge in the second picture on it`s way to Ruabon, crossing the canal at bridge 39, and the main Shrewsbury/Chester line.﻿

Looking through the station with the River Dee flowing by the line went as far as Barmouth until closure of the passenger line in 1965. Ten years later the railway re-opened with just 60 feet of track and to date the track now stretches past Carrog(7.5miles) and with new track recently laid is on it`s way to Corwen.

In British Railways Black 0-6-2 loco 58926 built in 1881 and owned by the National Trust sits waiting to switch platforms.

1744 is a 1921 0-6-2 tank engine owned by the Gresley society and visiting for the event from the Great Central Railway.

Built by the Caledonian railway in 1899 this 0-6-0 loco numbered 828 is visiting from Straphspey Railway in the Scottish highlands. It spent a lot of it`s working life on local routes from Aberdeen.

I expect 60163 Tornado recently built at a cost of £3m($4.5m) by the A1 steam locomotive trust was going to be a crowd puller. It is the 1st steam loco to be built for 50 years.

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I liked the Auto coach set up. Generally the coach and steam engine would be coupled together and when the train arrived at it`s destination the driver would go to the coach and drive the train back. You can see the driver just about to pull away towards camera. The controls he has are speed, brakes and whistle and are linked to the engine where the fireman remains to tend the fire.

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This train consists of 2 coaches with the engine in the middle. A link to a short film of the Auto coach working is http://youtu.be/RhoJxeZJ5nQ﻿

Steam, wonderful steam!If get over there, I can fill everybody in on the railways here in Canada having been a journalist for one US magazine and a contributing journalist to publications in Canada & elsewhere.Mike can fill you in once he gets settled on NB Garnet,

Ah this reminds me of when I took Kai to Llangollen when he was small, he wasn't at school and the week before they had a Thomas the tank engine week. When the train came in he was really upset that it wasn't Thomas so I convinced him that the train wasn't acting that day and he didn't have his makeup on!!!!Apparently it is a really nice trip on the train, sadly we didn't do it.